SwiftKey users in Australia can now type more easily, with the launch of our Australian English language model. No more choosing between UK and US English – this model was made by crunching over 14 billion words worth of Australian English text.

Did you know that Australians are twice as likely to use the word “mate” as Brits? And 30% more likely to use the word “barbecue”? Well, they do have better weather for it. As always, SwiftKey will learn the words and phrases that you use to build up your personal language profile. To get a head start on this learning you can also personalise from your Gmail emails, Facebook posts, and your tweets on Twitter.

You can change the language of your SwiftKey predictions (or add more – you can have up to three enabled at once) by longpressing on the bottom-left key of your keyboard, going to Settings, and choosing “Languages & layouts”. We currently support 45 languages, and more are on their way.

What’s this? An explosion of facial hair around the SwiftKey offices? Are the developers just working SO hard on SwiftKey Flow that they have no time to shave?

No – it’s Movember, the month when men grow moustaches in order to raise awareness (and donations) for prostate and testicular cancer. The rules are strict – according to the Movember website “there is to be no joining of the mo to the sideburns (that’s considered a beard), there’s to be no joining of the handlebars to the chin (that’s considered a goatee)”.

SwiftKey beat big names like Sky+, NetFlix and Hailo to be named app of the year. A big big thanks goes out to everyone who voted for us!

You can get SwiftKey 3 and SwiftKey 3 Tablet for half-price this weekend – don’t forget to tell your friends, family, and colleagues what a great bargain that is – just $1.99 for the official best app this year!

If you’re yet to give SwiftKey a try, now is the perfect time to experience the Android typing revolution for half-price. Be sure to share the love too, and let your friends and relatives know that they’ve got until Monday to grab this great deal. SwiftKey might just be the perfect companion to your shiny new gadget this Black Friday. We hope you’ll soon be wondering how you lived without it.

And for those of you wondering about SwiftKey Flow – our amazing new gesture typing technology – fear not. You’ll soon be able to beta test this via our VIP community, so register now if you’re interested. Otherwise hold tight and it’ll be available in our next major update to SwiftKey on Google Play and Amazon Appstore.

The results are in… and according to the SwiftKey Prez-o-meter, the President of the United States for the next four years is indeed Barack Obama!

We created a tool to analyze your tweets and tell you which presidential candidate you communicate most like, using our technology to compare your language to that used by both Democrat Barack Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney. You tested it out in your thousands and now we’ve crunched the stats, we can reveal the average result was 59.3% Obama and 40.7% Romney, making Obama the clear Prez-o-meter winner.

In fact, the Twitter accounts you plugged into the game were more favorable to Obama than the American electorate, as in real life he won just 50.4% of the popular vote (Florida has not published its final tally at time of writing).

We built it on one of our staff hack days – for most of our language analysis work we prefer to get our hands on significantly more data than we had to play with this time! But we hope it was fun, we hope it proved interesting to voters and we hope it showed off that our language technology expertise has a great many uses beyond making the smartest, most successful keyboard app in the world!

Keep your eyes peeled for other language innovations from SwiftKey in future!

Thanks,
Ruth

We’re very happy to hear that some of our fans have already nominated us in the TechCrunch 2012 Crunchies – awards that recognize and celebrate the most compelling startups, internet and technology innovations of the year. Best of all, the shortlist is put together by you, the users and fans, so you get to tell the experts which apps and innovations really make a difference to your life.

We need your help to get us on that all-important shortlist. You can nominate your favourite apps, startups, and innovations, then share and get your friends to vote for them too. You can nominate us in any of the categories (or indeed all of them!) but we are specifically calling on our supporters to vote for us in Best Mobile Application. Last year’s winner in this category was Evernote, and 2010’s Best Mobile Application was Google Maps, so we’ll be in pretty impressive company.

Earlier this year you helped us to beat Google to win a Webby – can SwiftKey’s fans help us to win a Crunchie as well? We believe you can! You can vote once every day from now until December 6th – the awards ceremony takes place on January 31st, 2013.

With your help we can do it!

Charlie

We’re excited to share that SwiftKey has received support from London Mayor Boris Johnson after moving into a brand new three-storey HQ in the UK capital.

“It is absolutely great to see more and more innovative companies like SwiftKey setting up new headquarters in London. It’s terrific to see young, tech-savvy Londoners getting meaningful work in this burgeoning industry,” the Mayor said.

“I wish SwiftKey all the best with their new headquarters in Southwark. It’s another feather in the cap of Europe’s tech capital,” he added.

SwiftKey CEO Jon Reynolds, left

The new base in Southwark, central London, spans three floors that are dedicated to working, brainstorming and innovating on products like SwiftKey and other treats that we’ve yet to reveal.

There’s room for a full-size ping pong table, bean-bag breakout areas and eight meeting rooms named after some of the inventors that we’re inspired by. We also have smaller offices in San Francisco and Seoul.

The move couldn’t have come at a better time for us, as we’ve doubled our workforce in the last six months alone with some incredibly talented new team members.

SwiftKey CTO Ben Medlock, middle

We recently threw an office warming to welcome our new team members and other friends of the business to our new space. Attendees included several of our London-based VIP community members, bloggers and startup founders.

As a small and growing business, we feel passionately about supporting the ecosystem we’re part of. That’s why we chose other startups and small companies to be our suppliers – chef Laurent from Housebites rustled up the amazing canapes and guests sipped on beers from the Meantime Brewery, fresh cocktails created by Mixology Events and Sauvignon Blanc from Borough Wines. We nibbled brownies from the Cinnamon Tree Bakery and hitched a ride home with Uber cars, who offered a discount to guests who were first time riders.

You can have a look at pictures from the party and our new workspace here on Flickr and also on our Facebook page (have you liked us yet?!).